Kiss & Hell (23 page)

The spirit’s outline began to fade again, frustrating her.

Clyde let out a grunt, his arms and legs giving out.

The moment Clyde slumped was the moment the spirit slipped away, evaporating into the air like a sliver of smoke. “Damn.”

His look was apologetic. “I’m sorry. I’ll get right on those yoga classes the moment I’m free of a little thing like Hell.”

She pressed a finger to her temple. “Did you see him? Maybe if you’d watched his lips move, you might have caught something I didn’t.”

Clyde’s body did that shudder thing again. “Delaney, I’ll say this one more time. No. I didn’t see him because I didn’t want to see him. He has no head. I repeat. No head. I can’t stress that enough. That’s just too weird for me. Besides, I was too busy clenching every muscle in my body to focus on much else. I’m also not ashamed to admit I’m just a little squeamish about blood and detached body parts anywhere on my person. So what more do we know about him tonight than we did this afternoon? He’s a doctor?”

“Yep, I think so. At least he made his head nod yes when I asked him if he was. Or he did something in the medical profession. He definitely lost his head in some kind of accident that had to suck big fat weenies. He was decapitated, I’m guessing. Can’t think of another explanation for why he’d be carrying around his head.”

Clyde jammed his hands in his pockets. “And we have the word
uma
. Which isn’t really a word.”

“Yep. Maybe he’s foreign like the lady with the doily on her head.” Damn, she should have asked him that, but with Clyde being her conduit for all things spiritual, it was distracting.

“Well, shit. I have to give you patience. This would drive me out of my mind.”

Her shoulders lifted, then released. “It’s what I do and sometimes, that’s how the spirits roll. They aren’t always sure why they’re here either, or the message they’re trying to send. It’s all a part of my medium package. Sometimes I have to figure it out on my own with most of the pieces of the puzzle missing.”

“Decapitated . . . you know, ironically, I once knew a guy who was decapitated.”

“Ugh. Really?”

“And as a matter of fact, he was a doctor, too. Brutal car accident.”

Maybe the spirit wanted to talk to Clyde? He’d said he was sick as a child . . . “Was he a young guy? Really blond with brown eyes? Very fit?”

“He did have brown eyes, but he was balding and had a paunch. It was a shame, too. He was a nice guy.”

“And he was a doctor?”

“Yeah. Geriatric. My mother’s.”

Damn. “Well, your doc doesn’t match my ghost’s MO, anyway. So back to square one for the headless scalpel wielder. That’s two ghosts in the matter of days who’ve shown up and I couldn’t help them.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Nope. So far, the only ghost I don’t get is Darwin. I don’t know why he won’t hit the field of endless tennis balls and rawhide bones. But it’s early in the game. Some spirits require more investigation than others and longer periods of interaction. But it’s bothering me that they don’t come in as clearly.”

Clyde put a hand of sympathy on her shoulder, creating mayhem in her stomach. “And I realize that’s my fault. However, I know what’d make you feel better.”

Your rock-hard body up against mine? On mine? Under mine? In a boat, on a float? Or even in a moat . . .
She mentally gasped.
Enough
. Delaney cleared her throat, moving away from Clyde. “What’d make me feel better?”

“My Slurpee. Bet if you had some of my banana Slurpee, you’d feel better.”

She grinned. “Bet I’d rather just hand over my left lung and a kidney.”

Clyde laughed. It rumbled from deep in his chest, making it strain against his borrowed polo shirt. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

His laugh was sexy when it was unbidden. The word
unbidden
sounded a lot like
forbidden
—which Clyde was. As had been that kiss she’d thrown at him like she was whoring for dollars. She needed space to recover. Like big. “It’s on my list of things to do. And now, I have to finish my inventory. Go amuse yourself. In fact, why not teach the dogs how to eat with the proper fork and polish my toenails for me. You’re good at making them listen.”

“You sure you don’t need help?” His stance said,
I’m just trying to be polite by offering
, but his eyes said something different.

Something she couldn’t quite read and was better off remaining illiterate to.

Flapping a hand at him, Delaney turned and backed out of the living room. “Nah. Go watch TV or something. It’s just boring paperwork,” she offered dismissively, turning toward the storefront. “I’ll try to be quiet if you crash on the couch. But be warned,” she called over her shoulder, “tomorrow—we go digging around your life and death.”
Because you have to go—soon—if not sooner
. He was too appealing on too many levels to be ignored, and that just couldn’t be.

End of.

“Clyyyyyyve . . . How’s it goin’, brother?”

The voice from behind Clyde, gravelly and harsh, crackled in his right ear as he sat on the couch, watching some inane program about a chef attacking unsuspecting women in a grocery store and taking them home to teach them how to cook. He didn’t turn around, keeping his face impassive and his tone cool. Whoever it was, it was someone who’d come to check up on him, and they expected to find that psycho Clyve, not the tame, unassuming, nonconfrontational Clyde. So this would be where he could rely on all those movies he’d watched when he was so sick. “What the hell are
you
doing here?” he said, dry and disinterested, cracking his knuckles.

“My job, asshole, which is checking up on your sorry behind.”

Clyde’s jaw clenched while he ground his teeth together. It was crucial he remember he was pretending to be a sociopath. “Fuck you. I don’t need a goddamned babysitter.”
Niice,
he commended himself. Nice snarly quality to his tone with just enough affront in it to make it sound like he was really that freak Clyve.

The voice hopped over the couch, slouching down next to Clyde, his greasy stench, like dead, rotting flesh, putrefying in his nostrils. “Don’t you think I fucking know that? I’m just doin’ what I’m supposed to do to get by. That psychopath Pauley sent me to check up on you because I was in the area. So here I am. Nice cover, by the way. You never woulda gotten within a hundred yards of this chick looking the way you did before you left Hell. What made you pick a guy who looks like a reject in a Calvin Klein underwear ad?”

He grunted, jamming his fingers under his armpits. He hadn’t picked anything. This really was what he looked like. But he remembered what Delaney’d said when he’d been duct-taped to the radiator and how some demons chose other forms to appear in. Clyde shrugged indifferently. “Saw it on the subway, and it wasn’t Klein, it was Kors somebody. You know, like the beer?”

The demon beside him cackled, revealing missing teeth and breath that smelled like a Dumpster. “Good thing, too. You were one ugly son of a bitch.”

Yeahhh. “Okay, so you’ve checked on me. Now get the fuck out.”

The demon screwed up his ugly, bony face, his skin mottled with pockmarks. “Christ. Don’t be such a fuckhead. You know what Pauley’s like. Since he made level boss, he’s up in our shit all the time. If he says check up on you—I’m doin’ it, motherfucker.” He craned his neck around, eyeballing the living room, the stretched skin of his face shiny under the lamp. “Where is she, anyway? Shouldn’t you be banging the shit out of her by now? It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

It was all he could do to keep from ramming his fist up this dick’s ass and leave it tangled somewhere in his esophagus. “Walking those stupid mutts,” he muttered. “But she’ll be back.” He gave the demon a sly grin, punching his fist into his hand. “You better get the hell out of here before she gets back. Her damned dogs can sniff out demons.”

“And they didn’t sniff out you?”

Clyde shot him another smug smile, adding a touch of lascivious and sneaky. “I’m that good. Don’t forget it.”

The demon slapped Clyde on the back. “She’s pretty fuckin’ hot. But I gotta tell ya, for the time she made my damned eyes feel like they were on fire, I can’t wait to see her dead. But just before she bites it, I wanna give it to her good.” He bent his arms at the elbows and made a lewd gesture with his hips.

Dead.
The idea that Delaney’d miss out on all those things she wanted so much because she was dead made him want to heave. Clyde rolled his head on his neck, fighting the sudden burst of total rage at even just the hint this prick would come anywhere near Delaney—let alone touch her. It made his stomach roil, but he had to play along or he’d be fucked. He held his tongue instead. He’d never been one to rush into anything; keeping his head was more crucial than it’d ever been before.

“So we’re cool, man?” he held out the top of his fist to Clyde.

With a sneer, Clyde ignored the dirt embedded under his fingernails and dropped his fist down on the demon’s—hard.

He snapped his hand back, shaking it out. “Ow! What’s your hard-on?”

“Pussy,” Clyde spat, letting his own cackle erupt from his throat. “Now get the fuck out of here before she comes back in and catches you here. I’m workin’ her like a snitch works the feds.”

He snorted. “You oughta know.” The demon grinned wide, the rot of his teeth making Clyde want to turn away in disgust. But he couldn’t do that. Apparently, whoever this asshole was, he’d known Clyve. That meant Clyde couldn’t take a chance the man’d figure out he wasn’t Clyve at all—and rat him out. The shit would get ugly if that happened and then he wouldn’t be here to watch Delaney’s butt. So he played along like they were long-lost buddies.

He slapped Clyde on the back again. “Yeah, yeah. Just remember, man, you’re being watched. The big boss wants this chick—bad. Don’t fuck it up or you’ll never make level four. I’ll tell Pauley you said hello.”

“Do that.”

The demon disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the foul stink of his rotting soul.

Dropping his head to his hands, Clyde inhaled a deep breath, shaking off the fear that rose in his throat like sour bile. How in the frig was he going to keep Hell from getting to Delaney? He was only one demon, and a sorry-assed one at that. Even if he could accumulate a power or two to help her, the shit he had to do to acquire them went so far against his nature, he couldn’t even think it.

He’d never forget the kinds of things those demons had laughed over around that water cooler. He’d never forget how their black gurgles of laughter had erupted when they’d talked about Delaney’s demise.

Now more than ever, he wanted to know what she’d done to have this much heat from Lucifer. The problem didn’t just lie with her crossing over souls. She’d said herself that most of the people she’d crossed weren’t the bottom-of-the-barrel souls. They were just indecisive, or needed to pass on one last message. She was their conduit for safe passage.

Something was out of whack with her claim of innocence. Something he had to make sure he found out before he had to leave her, or he’d risk leaving her to fuck knows what.

What would Satan do to her when he found out Clyde had fucked with his plans? How could he even consider crossing over knowing he’d leave her behind to face that alone? What would happen when his month was up and they came looking for Delaney’s soul?

While he’d like to believe his fears for Delaney were nothing more than humane, he knew better. He hadn’t experienced many women in his life, but he’d never experienced one like Delaney.

Right out of the gate, when he’d been looking down at her from that plane he’d been stuck on during the séance, he’d found her compelling. He’d been drawn to how utterly unaware she was that she had this fresh innocence about her. She had a sharp tongue, no doubt, and every time she used it to lambaste him for something new, he wanted to make it stop wagging by clamping his mouth over hers. And each time he was close to her he discovered something else he found attractive about her. All that red hair with darker strands of golden brown in it, for one. When was the last time he’d noticed fucking highlights in a woman’s hair? Yet the compulsion to run his fingers through it tonight and take a deep whiff of the apple shampoo she used was driving him out of his mind.

As was the soft, supple melding of her body to his and the curve where waist met hip.

To make this attraction to Delaney even less likely, she had fluky ideas, crazy notions, and a healthy sense of humor, considering her lot in life as a medium. She ate things he couldn’t pronounce that smelled like a Jersey dump, and believed in things he’d never heard of and couldn’t be swayed to change her mind about.

Yet, he found he respected that—much more than he would have if he’d known her when he was alive.

Alive . . . now that was a problem. If he’d known her in life, he might have missed her due to the fact that he’d once thought clairvoyants like her were quacks. Now that he knew her in this unlife, there was no chance this could go any further because his time would be up in a few weeks.

But then there was that kiss. Two of them, to be precise. One just as hot as the next. Her lips had done things to him. Things that had never been done before her. Her body, clapped up against his like plaster on a wall, had left him with a raging hard-on and a lust that tore at every nerve ending he possessed. It’d been a while since he’d been intimate with anyone, and he realized that could play a part in how much she turned him on, but not all of what he’d felt with Delaney attached to him had to do with sex.

He liked her.

He didn’t want her to be hurt.

He found he wanted her to have all the things she seemed to want so much.

He also found himself wondering if he were alive, with the kind of view he had on how precious life was now, if he wouldn’t want to explore her desires
with
her.

Clyde halted those thoughts with a mental screech of metaphoric brakes.

That just couldn’t happen. He’d come here, taken this blood-sucking assignment so he could get out of Hell with no idea he’d find himself attracted to this free spirit. Whether he succeeded or not, he had an egg timer attached to his time on this plane.